Nevi's Laser Tank (tm) 2.0.2

I know a lot of Disintegrate and Arcane Torrent builds have been popping up lately, and maybe you're all quite bored of them. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist the temptation to claim the following as more or less my own invention:

This build uses Disintegrate - Chaos Nexus as its only spender. As Jaetch has argued again and again, you don't want a build with more than one spender unless they synergize in some amazing way, since you cannot cast both at the same time, which essentially means the second spender is sitting on your bar, gathering dust, while you are casting the first. Disintegrate deals tons of sustained DPS and has a low enough AP cost to be cast infinitely if you have enough APoC / Crit / Resource Cost Reduction.

Because Disintegrate is a channeled skill that deals 0 Dmg when you are on the move, the aim of this build is kind of self-evident (although many builds I've seen appear to be unaware of it):

To maximize Disintegrate uptime.
How do we do this?

1) We make sure Disintegrate does not drain our AP pool.

We try to get it 'AP-stable', meaning it should drain your AP at the same speed as you are regenerating AP. There are several ways to achieve this.

- You could try to find a helm and offhand with Arcane Power on Crit (APoC), then get as much Crit on your gear as possible. This will allow you to regenerate lots of AP simply by attacking, which, imo, is a very solid method that can work even with very fast weapons and attack speeds. This method is probably RIP in RoS, because level 70 items will have far less APoC on them.

- Lacking sufficient Crit, APoC or Cost Reduction, you could grab a high damage twohanded weapon. Disintegrate will tick slower and drain your AP pool slower. Twohanders are currently weak, but a hotfix is coming soon that will hopefully put them on par again with onehanders.

2) We stack enough Toughness and Healing to allow us to stand still and nuke as long as possible.

When building a Disintegrate wizard, you really want to think about maximizing both damageandsurvivability. The longer you can stand still, the better your laser performs. This is why I call my build the Laser Tank; this is not a kiting build, this is not a glass cannon, this is standing still as long as possible and nuking until everything is dead and preferably moving around only with Teleport.

3. We minimize movement time to maximize DPS.

To maximize our Disintegrate uptime, we need to minimize the time we spend moving. Therefore, in spite of the tanky nature of this build, Movement Speed is still very useful to it. I wouldn't go overboard with Inna's Pants and Lacuni Prowlers, but the 12% Movement Speed on boots is still nice to have, and Movement Speed is also by far the best investment of your Core Paragon points.

Let's go over the skills, one by one, and explain why I picked them.

Actives

LMB Slow Time - Time Warp. This skill doubles as an offensive and defensive cooldown. The way in which it slows down everything around you allows you to maintain a position for much longer than usual. When the ground gets (literally) too hot under your feet, Teleport out of the bubble and proceed to nuke the mobs that are now momentarily stuck in it.. they still receive +10% dmg due to Time Warp.

RMB Teleport - Safe Passage. This skill is essential to the Laser Tank, because it allows her to move out of nasty stuff quickly while losing only a fraction of a second of Disintegrate uptime. Safe Passage was chosen to have the skill double as another defensive cooldown.

1. Familiar - Cannoneer or Sparkleflint The familiar adds a ton of damage to your own, and in spite of the recent fix to his attack speed, I'm still a big fan of the Canonneer rune. It allows the familiar to do AoE damage, which helps immensely against large groups.

2. Disintegrate - Chaos Nexus. The core of the build. It deals a ton of sustained DPS, pierces, has affordable AP cost.. what's not to love? Chaos Nexus rune is equally essential; while Intensify would seem to do a lot more damage (and does against single targets), the sidebeams of Chaos Nexus really help the Laser Wizard to melt down weaker enemies that swarm her while she keeps focussing his beam on the most important or dangerous target. It even hits targets behind your character, making it seem like you have eyes in the back of your head... laser eyes!

Kapsu suggests Entropy as an alternative rune, which deals higher AoE damage at the cost of range.

3. Magic Weapon - Force Weapon. A boring but effective way to boost the damage of your Disintegrate. The best thing about it as that it does not drain AP (as many more active options for this slot would) and therefore does not interfere with your Disintegrate uptime.

4. Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor, Pinpoint Barrier or Storm Armor - Power of the Storm. This choice really depends on your gear. You really want to avoid needing Storm Armor - Power of the Storm if at all possible, because Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor gives an incredible boost to your Toughness. The loss of max AP is not a big deal when you are regenerating AP fast enough through APoC. When you are kinda low on Crit, Pinpoint Barrier can help you reach that point where you get enough AP income from APoC by adding 5% crit.

Passives

Blur - Now that Blur affects all damage types, I believe it is by far the best straightforward defensive passive we have.

Astral Presence - This passive really helps you to keep up your Disintegrate longer, which was the core aim of this build.

Temporal Flux - Wait, what? We're tanking stuff, right? So why take a slow over, say, a stacking shield? Again a matter of personal preference. Disintegrate has the disadvantage of being pretty bad at hitting distant targets that 'strafe' across the screen. This passive really helps to slow down speedy enemies and slows down big, hard hitting enemies to a crawl, which again really helps you to minimize your own movement. It is, in other words, an indirect but highly effective DPS increase.

Unwavering Will - This passive fits perfectly into this build. Our aim is to stand still and nuke and this passive rewards us for it with a buff to both Toughness and Damage.

Viable Alternatives

I would consider the following skills to be viable alternatives for Slow Time (Time Warp): Archon (any rune), Arcane Orb (Orbit), Black Hole (Event Horizon or Spellsteal), Frost Nova (Bone Chill) (esp. when using Entropy).

With the discussion of skills out of the way, we can move on to discussing the most important stats for this build. Like we said, we want to get Disintegrate to a point where it can be channeled (semi)infinitely, so AP regen stats are important to us. Beyond this, all that matters is to get as much Damage, Tougness and Healing as we can muster. I think the stat priority should be something as follows:

That is all, I hope you enjoyed the long read. This build is a lot of fun and certainly what I will be playing in RoS.

PS: Please refer to me as Nevi (my Battletag) when mentioning this build, MarieLaveau is just a stupid forum name I picked in a moment of stupidity and cannot change back If a mod reads this, please change my name!

It's a great guide, but I think you haven't really thought the spec through as well as you could. With the new patch I'm a huge Disintegrate patch and I think it is one of the best if not the best AP spender for wizards at the moment, especially with a Slorak's Madness.

See, the main problem I have with your build is the fact that you're running an AP generator. I find it funny that you try to avoid using Storm Armor - Power of the Storm, when it provides you with DPS and a possibility to drop your AP generator entirely. I am at the moment running 9 APoC, which is well enough to sustain constant Disintigrate channeling time with ease on anything except single bosses (which are extremely rare in common farming, and even there the wait time is minimal and only on higher difficulties).

I honestly don't know why you chose Chaos Nexus over Entropy. Entropy deals roughly the same amount of damage, but it has a larger AoE (although not as long a range, but we'll get to this) AND it has a higher proc coefficient for LoH. I think that if we build our character around Entropy, we can achieve more damage and at least as good a survivability.

Frost Nova? What, seriously? Yes. It provides us a significant DPS boost both in terms of the rune and in terms of keeping the mobs where we want them to be. This skill is outright amazing and can be used both defensively and offensively depending on the situation. I would give up my liver for this spell.

Then we have Archon. This slow is really personal preference. You could pick teleport for this (which is definetely not a bad option at all), or Mirror Image, or Hydra, or Archon (even Arcane Orb - Arcane Orbit can work). Any is fine, really. I use Archon most of the time because it speeds up my T6 elite kills a bit and can provide an oh-shit tool in terms of it's Teleport, too. I plan to replace Archon for Black Hole once RoS hits.

Then the passives. I agree with Blur and Astral Presence. However, I think Unstable Anomaly is the better choice than Temporal Flux. The way to think of this passive is, it provides us with 45% additional Toughness until it procs, at which point you drop down to your original Toughness amount for 60 seconds. Quite good in my opinion. I've done some testing with Temporal Flux and it's OK, but nothing as gamebreaking as Unstable Anomaly.

I don't think anything justifies having Magic Missile in a spec, other than absolutely just loving it (I dont even understand why you would love it). Disintigrate does waaaaay more damage and procs LoH per second on a rate that's a bit over 2/3 of what Magic Missile procs it. I see no justification whatsoever.

Something I would like to add though, is that the fact that you've made a guide this thorough is simply amazing. I am tipping my hats off to you times a thousand. Very good job. Posts like these are a joy to read and a joy to respond to, as I can be sure the person replying won't be a 12-year old who made a shitty streamlike, unedited, boring video of himself going over the build for 20 minutes and then showing some gameplay on T1. Well done, great job.
Oh and I think I should link my armory for reference, too.
(BTW I recommend getting +%Disintegrate damage on boots and speccing Movement speed on your Paragon points to replace the lost % from Zunimassa's. It's definetely worth the Int loss from Paragon.)

See, the main problem I have with your build is the fact that you're running an AP generator. I find it funny that you try to avoid using Storm Armor - Power of the Storm, when it provides you with DPS and a possibility to drop your AP generator entirely. I am at the moment running 9 APoC, which is well enough to sustain constant Disintigrate channeling time with ease on anything except single bosses (which are extremely rare in common farming, and even there the wait time is minimal and only on higher difficulties).

Frost Nova? What, seriously? Yes. It provides us a significant DPS boost both in terms of the rune and in terms of keeping the mobs where we want them to be. This skill is outright amazing and can be used both defensively and offensively depending on the situation. I would give up my liver for this spell.

Then the passives. I agree with Blur and Astral Presence. However, I think Unstable Anomaly is the better choice than Temporal Flux. The way to think of this passive is, it provides us with 45% additional Toughness until it procs, at which point you drop down to your original Toughness amount for 60 seconds. Quite good in my opinion. I've done some testing with Temporal Flux and it's OK, but nothing as gamebreaking as Unstable Anomaly.

Like I said, Magic Missile has no function in my build other than the fact that I like it Archon is indeed much better, but if you read my guide you see I suggest numerous skills that synergize excellently with Disintegrate and could all justifiably fill the space of Magic Missile. Frost Nova (Bone Chill) being one of them.

MM isn't used as AP generator in my current setup. I use it solely to hit stuff that's out of my range or dodging like mad. You do have a point that it would be better if I advised people to stay away from it entirely. In spite of my odd preference for this skill on LMB, I would probably do better taking any mention of it out of the guide entirely. I will make another edit of this guide tonight.

I agree Unstable Anomaly provides a nice survival boost, but it needs to proc before it does anything, while Temporal Flux grants a huge quality of life improvement 100% of the time. You can debate this point endlessly I think, because in the end it is up to personal taste. UA is better on paper, TF is what I love and use.

I agree with most if not all of Kapsu's points. Especially with regard the use of magic missiles. If you love MM then build a build around that, currently with the combination of low attack speed or APoC distintegrate almost becomes a signature spell itself and does so much more damage i'm not sure why you've ever stop to cast MM.

Along with the boot suggestion you may also want to consider trying a hem with +15% disitegrate too.

See, the main problem I have with your build is the fact that you're running an AP generator. I find it funny that you try to avoid using Storm Armor - Power of the Storm, when it provides you with DPS and a possibility to drop your AP generator entirely. I am at the moment running 9 APoC, which is well enough to sustain constant Disintigrate channeling time with ease on anything except single bosses (which are extremely rare in common farming, and even there the wait time is minimal and only on higher difficulties).

Frost Nova? What, seriously? Yes. It provides us a significant DPS boost both in terms of the rune and in terms of keeping the mobs where we want them to be. This skill is outright amazing and can be used both defensively and offensively depending on the situation. I would give up my liver for this spell.

Then the passives. I agree with Blur and Astral Presence. However, I think Unstable Anomaly is the better choice than Temporal Flux. The way to think of this passive is, it provides us with 45% additional Toughness until it procs, at which point you drop down to your original Toughness amount for 60 seconds. Quite good in my opinion. I've done some testing with Temporal Flux and it's OK, but nothing as gamebreaking as Unstable Anomaly.

Like I said, Magic Missile has no function in my build other than the fact that I like it Archon is indeed much better, but if you read my guide you see I suggest numerous skills that synergize excellently with Disintegrate and could all justifiably fill the space of Magic Missile. Frost Nova (Bone Chill) being one of them.

MM isn't used as AP generator in my current setup. I use it solely to hit stuff that's out of my range or dodging like mad. You do have a point that it would be better if I advised people to stay away from it entirely. In spite of my odd preference for this skill on LMB, I would probably do better taking any mention of it out of the guide entirely. I will make another edit of this guide tonight.

I agree Unstable Anomaly provides a nice survival boost, but it needs to proc before it does anything, while Temporal Flux grants a huge quality of life improvement 100% of the time. You can debate this point endlessly I think, because in the end it is up to personal taste. UA is better on paper, TF is what I love and use.

Thank you for your positive and in-depth feedback.

I think you would do better to not mention Magic Missile at all in the guide and suggest something else instead of it, but the again I don't like Chaos Nexus either (in terms of using it and in terms of the maths, both). Or, of course, mention it in a sideline, saying you enjoy using it. The point of a guide, though, is to teach people something and provide a build that is as optimal as possible, and then the reader can work out their preferences with your help (since the guide is so damn well-written).

I don't think Frost Nova is that amazing unless you're using Entropy, as if you're in melee range with Chaos Nexus you could just use Entropy, and if you're not in melee range, Frost Nova doesn't do much.

I do agree we could debate Unstable Anomaly vs. Temporal Flux forever, and I also agree we shouldn't. It is definetely a preference kind of thing and I do agree with you using it, however I think it would be fair to mention other options in a more detailed manner as well. The big ones being Illusionist (only if running Teleport/Mirror Image/both), Unstable Anomaly, Glass Cannon and Dominance.

Have you tried to use Glacial Spike on Magic Missile? I think if you love Magic Missile, you should try to use it, as it provides a justifiable benefit. Freeze on a 5 second cooldown is not bad at all, especially if you're not running Frost Nova.

See, the main problem I have with your build is the fact that you're running an AP generator. I find it funny that you try to avoid using Storm Armor - Power of the Storm, when it provides you with DPS and a possibility to drop your AP generator entirely. I am at the moment running 9 APoC, which is well enough to sustain constant Disintigrate channeling time with ease on anything except single bosses (which are extremely rare in common farming, and even there the wait time is minimal and only on higher difficulties).

Frost Nova? What, seriously? Yes. It provides us a significant DPS boost both in terms of the rune and in terms of keeping the mobs where we want them to be. This skill is outright amazing and can be used both defensively and offensively depending on the situation. I would give up my liver for this spell.

Then the passives. I agree with Blur and Astral Presence. However, I think Unstable Anomaly is the better choice than Temporal Flux. The way to think of this passive is, it provides us with 45% additional Toughness until it procs, at which point you drop down to your original Toughness amount for 60 seconds. Quite good in my opinion. I've done some testing with Temporal Flux and it's OK, but nothing as gamebreaking as Unstable Anomaly.

Like I said, Magic Missile has no function in my build other than the fact that I like it Archon is indeed much better, but if you read my guide you see I suggest numerous skills that synergize excellently with Disintegrate and could all justifiably fill the space of Magic Missile. Frost Nova (Bone Chill) being one of them.

MM isn't used as AP generator in my current setup. I use it solely to hit stuff that's out of my range or dodging like mad. You do have a point that it would be better if I advised people to stay away from it entirely. In spite of my odd preference for this skill on LMB, I would probably do better taking any mention of it out of the guide entirely. I will make another edit of this guide tonight.

I agree Unstable Anomaly provides a nice survival boost, but it needs to proc before it does anything, while Temporal Flux grants a huge quality of life improvement 100% of the time. You can debate this point endlessly I think, because in the end it is up to personal taste. UA is better on paper, TF is what I love and use.

Thank you for your positive and in-depth feedback.

I think you would do better to not mention Magic Missile at all in the guide and suggest something else instead of it, but the again I don't like Chaos Nexus either (in terms of using it and in terms of the maths, both). Or, of course, mention it in a sideline, saying you enjoy using it. The point of a guide, though, is to teach people something and provide a build that is as optimal as possible, and then the reader can work out their preferences with your help (since the guide is so damn well-written).

I don't think Frost Nova is that amazing unless you're using Entropy, as if you're in melee range with Chaos Nexus you could just use Entropy, and if you're not in melee range, Frost Nova doesn't do much.

I do agree we could debate Unstable Anomaly vs. Temporal Flux forever, and I also agree we shouldn't. It is definetely a preference kind of thing and I do agree with you using it, however I think it would be fair to mention other options in a more detailed manner as well. The big ones being Illusionist (only if running Teleport/Mirror Image/both), Unstable Anomaly, Glass Cannon and Dominance.

Have you tried to use Glacial Spike on Magic Missile? I think if you love Magic Missile, you should try to use it, as it provides a justifiable benefit. Freeze on a 5 second cooldown is not bad at all, especially if you're not running Frost Nova.

Your comments are helpful but also create a kind of dilemma for me. After all, if I switch out runes like Chaos Nexus for Entropy, I'd be lying to claim it as 'my' build because I wouldn't like to play it myself at all. So although you have a valid point that a build should be as optimal as possible, I chose in this case to include a number of skills that just feel good for me, personally. If they feel great for me, they could feel great for someone else, as well, right?

Here's my suggestion of a slightly more 'optimized' build that I would still like to play myself: linkSlow Time (Time Warp) takes over part the role of your Frost Nova (Bone Chill) here, with the slight advantage that you don't have to facetank packs in order for it to do its work, and the obvious disadvantage that it doesn't freeze. You can stay in the bubble until the ground becomes (literally) too hot under your feet, then Tele out and continue nuking the mobs now caught in the bubble. This is a variation I play with often.

Your build is a stronger tanking build, I admit. And if you plan to literally facetank stuff, Entropy beats Chaos Nexus any day of the week. I still prefer Chaos Nexus for it's auto-targetting and the way in which it starts slowing and burning down many mobs long before they even reach me. I often play with a barb and he loves the way I burn down and slow down distant mobs that 'kite' him, like Fallen Shaman. Perhaps a better description than 'tank' would be 'tough cannon'. I do still play like a ranged character, I just don't move unless absolutely necessary.

You have a fair point there and I like the new variation of your build. I don't honestly know what else to say. The build is definetely worth trying, I most likely will. I love the amount of utility in the spec and with some changes it could work really well in groups.

The runes and passives are a bit different, but this is otherwise precisely what I've been rolling. Works marvelously.

I honestly think that is one of the best builds out there right now, at least for solo T6. For multiplayer there are other aspects that need to be considered, but then again, I'm not much of a multiplayer guy.

What are you running precisely?
Edit: I think maybe I should start my own thread for this, I've been praising it for a week or two in other threads, maybe it would be time.